Is 'Gadget Paranoia' Blowing Your Buzz?

Until recently, I owned a mobile phone so chunky and ridiculous
that people had started to laugh at it – including, memorably,
the staff at the shop where I'd originally bought it. (In their
defence, I'd had it since 2007, which is the Mesolithic period in
phone years.) But if there's one thing psychology has taught us,
it's that buying shiny gadgets is a guaranteed path to
fulfilment, so I'm now the proud owner of a Nexus 4, a sleek, blemish-free slab of glass, 9mm
thick.

Well, I say "proud owner". "Proud but with a background hum
of anxiety" is more like it. Because it is, after all, a
blemish-free slab of glass – which means I can never quite forget
the risk of dropping or scratching it.

This affliction – some sufferers call it "gadget paranoia" – turns out to be widespread in
this era of aesthetically wondrous smartphones, tablets and
laptops, many either conceived by or copied from Apple's
chief designer, Jonathan Ive. "OK, this is ruining my life,"
writes someone using the name Daikyouju at MacRumors.com, "and maybe it's
happening the same to some of you, too. I'm tired of buying
microfibre cloths and expensive polishes, just for seeking
perfection in my Apple gadgets, and worrying too much about
them. How can I get over this?"

This underlying phenomenon isn't new: we've probably all known
people who keep the plastic covers on the sofa, or who won't open
books properly, for fear of cracking the spine. But never before
has such fragile gorgeousness been so basic a part of the
daily routine.

What's strange about gadget paranoia is how the standard I feel
under pressure to maintain seems to emerge, so to speak, from the
object itself, not from me. I bought the phone for its functions,
not its beauty; but I got the beauty, too, and now that demands
upkeep.

There's an echo here of Nassim Taleb's advice, in his book The Black Swan, to stop running for trains: "Missing
a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not
matching the idea of success others expect from you is only
painful if that's what you are seeking." Since reading that, I've
stopped running for underground trains (and buses). I'll break
that rule if I'm genuinely in danger of being late. But the mere
fact that a train's about to leave isn't a reason to hurry – just
as the fact that a gadget's blemish-free isn't a reason to keep
it that way. How many other such dictates am I unwittingly
following? It's unsettling to speculate.

The standard advice to gadget paranoiacs is, in essence, to get
over it (or buy a protective case). "A few knocks along the way
add character," argues Jamie Condliffe at Gizmodo.com. "Those little
scratches will remind you of things that actually happen in your
life. I have a ding in mine from when I walked into a wall drunk.
That was a good night."

Others tell of smashing their phones, then realising they're glad: the pressure's off. The easiest way to
eliminate the stress of maintaining a perfect record in
anything is to fail: thereafter, perfection's no longer an
option. "I was at someone's house when they accepted delivery of
their brand new motorcycle," recalls one contributor to the community site Ask
MetaFilter. "First thing he did was reach down and grab a
handful of gravel [and] throw it at the gas tank: 'There, now I
don't have to worry about that.' "